Audio

In my youth, I played at trains: now all steam is gone.
In my dreams, brief shelter from the rain,
I try to catch the fireglow....
With Dinky Toys, I thought that I was Stirling,
with cricket bat, I saw myself as Peter May;
now, with all these images returning,
I wonder who I am today?

As a child, I refought the war
with plastic planes and imagination:
I sank Tirpitz, blew up the Mohne dam, all these and more,
I was the saviour of the Nation!
Oh! To be the captain of a ship of war!
The pilot of a Tempest or a York!
To hold my trench against the Panzer Korps

I read the news in a paper:
no flowers, please, donations to charity
like the N.S.P.C.V.d.G.G. -
yeh, send the money
to Guy and Hugh and David and me.

It's a joke,
there is no hope left,
oh, whoever might disagree.

Tell me juicy rumours,
dish me the dirt,
go on and rip the back right off my shirt.

Tell me how I hate Hugh Banton,
tell us that the bank account is zero
and that anyway there's non-one left to play to...
oh, well, there you go.

Are we ever going to get this act together on time?

The air is thin, the air is thin,
the Top of the World Club’s what we’re in.
How thin the air, how thin the air,
the Top of the World Club isn’t there.

With easy grace they crawl
across the shadow-shifting city sky,
an aerial flotilla,
the ghosts of planes pass by.

Their gravid bellies bursting,
gravity distended out of shape;
from the consequence of action
history offers no escape.

Arrival and departure,
all points in between now coincide.
Here’s a ticket to oblivion.
Onward passage is denied.

The air is thin, the air is thin,

In Guastalla the church bell rang in a silence just during Peter was singing (The Sleepwalkers) "If I only have time... but soon my time is ended"

In Trieste Hugh used the organ twice in the same way,the sound was like a bell. (Meurglys III)

From darkvinland

Jon Kirkman talks with Peter Hammill about Van der Graaf Generator, its 2007 Paradiso gig, VdGG members, VdGG music and much more...

Interview published on Voiceprint Web Radio
Voiceprint also released Live at the Paradiso VdGG DVD

http://www.vdggdvd.com/

North was somewhere years ago and cold:
Ice locked the people's hearts and made them old.
South was birth to pleasant lands, but dry...
I walked the waters' depths and played my mind.

East was dawn, coming alive in the golden sun:
the winds came gently, several heads became one
in the summertime, though august people sneered;
we were at peace, and we cheered.

We walked along, sometimes hand in hand,
between the thin lines marking sea and sand;
smiling very peacefully,
we began to notice that we could be free,
and we moved together to the West.

Recorded on Apr 13 1977
Released on "The Peel Sessions" in 1995
BBC radio sessions 1974-1988

So here we are, alone -
our children have grown up and moved away.
living their own lives, they say...
it all seems very strange to me.

I don't understand their ways:
our children amaze me all the time
and I often wonder why they make me feel
so sad and suddenly old.

Now we're left with an empty home,
from our nest all the birds have flown for foreign skies.

Hammill co-wrote and sang on "Phosphorescence" and "From Far Away" on Saro Cosentino, Ones And Zeros.

Sleep now, another day in your young lives is done,
go to sleep now; tomorrow brave new worlds
will surely come, go to sleep;
you're such a wonder, such a mystery to me.
Somewhere your future friends are lying as you are
and your lovers right now are only crying babes in arms
oh, the world turns under our feet, our lives are passing by
in our sleep.

So soon you'll be gone to that wide world
the tunes of adulthood calling little girls.

Remember, whatever else in life you find to doubt,
do remember, although you hear him mostly in a shout,
your father loves you

Dimitris Antonopoulos interviewed PH by phone for the Κανάλι Ένα Radio (Kanali Ena -Channel One) show on Nov 06 2003

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Thx to darkvinland 'discovering' the interview + her magic touch on the audio file and to Dimitris for the interview